Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Season 11 Episode 25
Aired on October 6, 2024
Main segment: Traffic stops in the United States
Other segments: October 2024 Iranian strikes against Israel, Lance Wallnau’s Courage Tour, 2024 United States vice presidential debate, new case filing in Jack Smith’s 2020 U.S. presidential election interference investigation
* * *
JOHN: Welcome, welcome, welcome to Last Week Tonight. I’m John. Thank you so much for joining us. It has been a busy week: the Southeast continued its recovery from Helen, port workers briefly went on strike, and the Middle East inched closer to all-out war—something one local station tried to fold into its broadcast with mixed results.
“All right guys, breaking news: Iran has launched a missile attack against Israel. The U.S. had officially warned Iran earlier to not launch any missiles, or else there could be severe consequences. Again, we’re going to continue to gather more information and follow this and provide that for you as soon as we get it.”
Also, switching gears here now, today is National Taco Day, which falls on the first Tuesday of October. You may not know this, but Tamar Berg recently competed in a taco-eating contest at Jimboy’s Tacos. Wow. You really are what you eat, aren’t you, Tamara?
“Absolutely. And you guys know, if you follow me on social media, my passion runs deep for tacos.”
JOHN: Excellent. That is exactly what I want from local news. Save the globally significant events for later; I want to see a journalism major with a giant taco on her head look directly into the camera and say, and I quote, “My passion runs deep for tacos.” Just imagine other news delivered that way:
“From Dallas, Texas: the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time. Switching gears, you probably already knew this about me, but I’m the biggest hot dog hound around.”
Meanwhile, it was the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday, held in this very building. In fact, this studio served as the post-debate spin room, meaning you’re all breathing the same air particles that were once inside Don Junior’s nose and mouth. So, if anyone in this audience wakes up tomorrow feeling like you have a sore throat and you’re a total disappointment to your father, that’s probably why.
In contrast to the presidential debate, Vance and Walz seemed at pains to be courteous to one another, something many commentators saw as a plus.
The debate was so polite, it’s being called a night of “Midwest Nice.”
Despite their differences, they still managed to be civil.
It was so refreshing to see these two guys be so polite to one another. Even at one point…
This was a civil debate, it almost seemed like these guys kind of liked each other.
In many ways, that’s what the country has been saying, they want more of it.
JOHN: Okay, but first on the list of things America has been saying it wants more of? Civility is, at best, number six, after affordable healthcare, gun control, cheaper housing, reproductive rights, and starring vehicles for Nicola Coughlan.
But also, why do manners matter here? The debate included discussions on how to carry out mass deportations and whether women should have control over their own bodies. Etiquette is kind of beside the point. It’s like reading a ransom note and going, “This cursive is just so lovely. Look at the capital Y in ‘You have 24 hours before he dies.'”
There are still some people who were raised right..
Complimenting Vance on his civil tone is a little hard to take, given how he spent the rest of his week. Just days before the debate, he took part in an event called the “Courage Tour,” hosted by Lance Wallnau, a prominent far-right Christian nationalist who’s talked about Kamala Harris like this:
“She can look presidential, and that’s the seduction of what I would say is witchcraft. That’s the manipulation of imagery that creates an impression contrary to the truth but seduces you into seeing it. So that spirit, that occult spirit, I believe, is operating on her and through her.”
JOHN: Okay. First, Kamala Harris isn’t the one who’s been relentlessly promoting witchcraft—you’re thinking of Universal’s marketing department. And this guy clearly shouldn’t be commenting on the election; he should be standing in a tent in 1856, selling children mercury tonics he claims will let them talk to ghosts.
Honestly, it feels like the question that [?] should really be asking there is, “Hold on, is this wacky bitch for real?”
And it gets worse because at the event in Pennsylvania, Wallnau explained that Vance had been scheduled to be elsewhere, but “God managed to change his plans.” You’re not going to believe the logic behind that:
“As you know, we have vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance coming. I’ll be honest with you, I take that as a direct act of God. Amen! Because it just came together in a certain way. Pittsburgh wasn’t even on the map—it was supposed to be North Carolina. And God switched it that fast for you.”
JOHN: Yeah, apparently God made sure Helen’s floods brought J.D. Vance to that event. Look, I’m not the authority on being Christian. I was evidently the only comedian in the world who didn’t meet the f*cking Pope this year. But if you believe in a God who’d unleash a devastating hurricane just so J.D. Vance could spend an afternoon outside Pittsburgh, your God sounds like an a**hole!
During Vance’s appearance at the event, he seemed more than happy to play to the crowd:
“The American education system used to be the envy of the world. Rich or poor alike, we believed that every person deserves a quality education. Well, now we’ve got American children who can’t add five plus five, but they can tell you that there are 87 different genders.”
JOHN: What are you talking about? That is obviously bigoted bullsh*t. If any kids are missing out on their addition lessons, it’s for the exact same reason they always have been: because they’re way too distracted by the class hamster. How are kids supposed to focus on their math worksheets when Meatball over here is sprinting on his wheel like he’s on coke, rolling around chaotically in a toilet paper tube, and panicking, stuffing his cheeks with a month’s supply of carrot chunks? He looks like Marlon Brando in The Godfather, and those kids are supposed to focus on math? It’s not happening.
But that is who Vance actually is. And at the end of the debate, he let a glimpse of that come through when the subject turned to the last election, and he offered this revisionist history:
“Remember, he said that on January the 6th, the protesters ought to protest peacefully, and on January the 20th, what happened? Joe Biden became the president, and Donald Trump left the White House.”
“Did he lose the 2020 election?”
“Tim, I’m focused on the future.”
That is a damning non-answer.
JOHN: Yeah, it is. “I’m focused on the future” is one of the most generic store-brand f*ckboy deflections there is. It’s no wonder Tim Wolfe broke the fourth wall there like he was in Abbott Elementary, because “I’m focused on the future” is what you say when you want to change the subject. If not, you just answer the question. I’ll show you:
“John, have you ever murdered someone?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Have you ever been mistaken for Penn Badgley?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Have you ever been forcibly removed from Rainforest Cafe for insisting that the frog was coming on to you?”
“Look, I’m focused on the future. I’m moving forward.”
That answer was especially glaring considering the day after the debate, a judge unsealed special prosecutor Jack Smith’s 165-page brief in the election fraud case against Trump, reminding us yet again of the ridiculous steps he took to avoid leaving office.
The brief presents the fullest picture yet of Smith’s case: that Trump knew he lost but lied to the American people anyway. Prosecutors claimed they spoke to one White House staffer who said he overheard Trump telling family members, “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election, you still have to fight like hell.”
JOHN: But it super matters if you lost. It’s kind of the main thing that matters. That is the most unsettling thing you could possibly overhear if you work at the White House, including LBJ ordering pants with more room around his bung hole. Real ones will know. And Commander Biden mauling his 78th secret service agent.
There was a lot in the filing that we already knew, like Trump responding after being told Mike Pence had to be evacuated from the Capitol with, “So what?” It also featured new details, like Trump at one point muting Sidney Powell when she was outlining her bogus fraud claims, telling people she was crazy.
If I ever found out that I lied so badly that Donald Trump muted the call to say, “This is some crazy sh**,” you would never see me again. I would walk directly into the ocean.
And none of this is theoretical. If Trump loses next month, there is every reason to believe he’ll dispute the results again. And Vance has made it clear he’s got no problem with that. That alone should be disqualifying. For all the talk this week about his “civility” at the debate, let’s not forget, deep down, he’s the same colossal deep sh*t who spews right-wing hate with distressing ease and continues to defend the big lie that the last election was stolen.
It’s all tremendously bleak, which is why, to borrow a phrase I heard recently: “I’m focused on the future.” Specifically, one in which, in four weeks’ time, Trump hopefully loses this f*cking election.
[…]
JOHN: Moving on, our main story tonight concerns cars—where golf carts see themselves in five years. Specifically, we’re going to talk about traffic stops, the most common law enforcement interaction in America. Police pull over more than 50,000 drivers on a typical day, adding up to more than 20 million motorists a year. They do so for all sorts of reasons—from speeding to broken taillights to, spectacularly, this:
“The way he came up to the truck, I knew I was like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna piss this man off. He’s mad about something.’”
“You’re under arrest.”
“And I was like, ‘For what? What did I do?’”
“Anything I’m pulling you over for is your derogatory sticker on the back of your truck.”
“It’s words.”
“It’s words.”
“Okay, what do those words mean?”
“It’s Ass. I eat ass.“
“If I told you I wanted to pull you over for a sticker, you’re not going to believe that?”
“All in capital letters, ‘I EAT A**?’
JOHN: Yes. Every part of that is excellent. Very much including the “Ask Me About My First Amendment Rights” t-shirt, which is a masterclass in personal branding.
Though, I’m just going to say it: that guy doesn’t strike me as a real a** eater. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure he’s enthusiastic, but attentive and willing to follow directions? Absolutely not.
But as you undoubtedly know, not all traffic stops make the news because they’re ridiculous. Sometimes it’s because they end in violence. Since 2017, police have killed at least 813 people during traffic stops, with Black people disproportionately impacted, making up 29% of those killed despite representing only around 14% of the population.
We’ve all seen the videos of high-profile killings, like those of Philando Castile, Daunte Wright, or Tyre Nichols. The horror of those videos should be seared into our collective consciousness by now, so I’m not going to play any of that footage tonight.
For Black people in particular, those incidents have highlighted what they already know all too well: that driving comes with a constant undercurrent of fear.
What does it mean to drive while Black?
Driving scared. Every time you get in your vehicle, you’re scared. Because if any cop gets behind you, if you ask any African American, our hearts instantly drop.
It means to drive around in fear. It means to drive around and also hope.
What’s the hope?
Hope that we make it home safe.
How do you think your life would be different if you were a white dude?
For driving purposes? I wouldn’t worry every time I see a cop.
JOHN: There are lots of things people have to worry about while driving: getting lost, getting into an accident, getting stopped by a crosswalk flash mob where James Corden thrusts at your car while dressed like a large mouse. All real and upsetting possibilities.
But no one should also have to worry about getting harassed or potentially killed. And while the incidents that give rise to that fear are often discussed as the result of individual “bad apple” cops, the truth is that they’re the inevitable result of deliberate decisions that have turned traffic stops into a systemic issue. So tonight, let’s talk about traffic stops—the power we’ve given to cops during them, how they exercise and often abuse that power, and some simple ways we can start to change all this.
Let’s start by acknowledging that the police do pull people over for completely legitimate road safety reasons, like dangerous speeding or drunk driving. You want those people off the roads. You don’t need me to show you a clip about the importance of road safety, but I’m going to do that anyway because when else am I going to have the chance to show you this?
An accident. An accident. The humans have an accident. There was a child in the car! A child! A child! Cats have nine lives, children only one. Help them live that life. Buckle them into a car seat. No one wants a child to become a memory.
JOHN: Wow, that was a lot. I’d almost forgotten all those weird characters from Cats, like Angelica Splat, Turnip, Zazzle Skunk, Old Colostomy, Skle Jiz, Nipple-Twister, and Mr. Bumble F*ck. I don’t remember their real names, but I’m pretty sure that’s close enough.
Let me just say this: that musical is an abomination. If there’s ever a day when Andrew Lloyd Webber has no haters, that means that I am dead. And so, by the way, is Patti LuPone.
But of course, that ad is completely right. You don’t want someone driving unsafely to claim the life of a child. But the truth is, lots of stops aren’t about safety at all. In fact, many are so-called pretextual stops—basically, the police using a minor traffic violation to detain you while they investigate for further evidence of crimes, like illegal guns or drugs. And they have a lot of leeway to do that.
When it comes to searching your house, the Fourth Amendment generally requires police to get a warrant approved by a judge beforehand. But when it comes to cars, the courts decided that because cars can drive away, requiring a warrant is impractical. So over the years, the Supreme Court has given police wide discretion in how a traffic stop is handled. In 1996, in Whren v. United States, the court fully legalized pretextual stops, ruling that the constitutionality of a stop didn’t depend on the actual motivations of the individual officers involved. Essentially, as long as police have evidence of a traffic violation—however minor—they can use a simple stop to start a criminal investigation.
What this means in practice is that a lot of stops now amount to shaking people down to see what crimes fall out. One of the popular manuals for training police in traffic investigations flat out states, “Criminal patrol, in large part, is a numbers game, and you need a lot of contacts to find the relatively few felony offenders you’re most interested in.” One former officer has even admitted, “We fish. If I follow a car for five minutes, I can always find one or two moving violations.”
And that’s true. There are so many laws on the books, a cop can always find a reason to pull someone over.
Experts say finding the initial reason to pull someone over is easy. That became quickly apparent during an afternoon with an officer of the Oakland, California Police Department:
“This Infiniti that drove by has a bumper that’s loose. That’s a vehicle code violation. All lights must work, right? So his top brake light does not work. So I can stop him for that.”
JOHN: Right, and it’s not just loose bumpers. There are tons of minor infractions on the books. Massachusetts has a list of traffic violations that’s 25 pages long. Florida’s is 32 pages. And in New York City, the list is 135 pages long. No driver is going to be familiar with every single rule. No one is reading that whole thing—not even me, and I have resting “reads traffic codes for pleasure” face.
Some of the laws around the country are truly absurd. Some states, for instance, have laws that prohibit drivers from hanging objects from their rearview mirrors, including air fresheners and rosary beads. Incidentally, a dangling air freshener was the justification for pulling over Daunte Wright.
Many officers insist that pretextual stops are essential to fighting crime. Here’s a police chief explaining why stopping someone for something as innocuous as an air freshener actually makes total sense:
“So, it could seem petty to some people, but in my 32 years in law enforcement, I’ve seen many minor traffic violations lead to big arrests—wanted felons, fugitives from justice, murder suspects.”
JOHN: But that’s still petty. It is petty to pull someone over for not wanting their car to smell like farts and yogurt that they know is back there somewhere but can’t find.
And when pressed for evidence that pretextual stops being an effective crime fighting tool, cops constantly bring up how a state trooper caught Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh by stopping him for driving with no license plate. It’s a case that now holds mythic status among police officers, which is a little weird because, one, he was only caught after the bombing, which to be honest feels like more of a miss than a hit, and two, the reason they were able to arrest him is because McVeigh was carrying a concealed weapon—something which is not actually illegal in Oklahoma anymore. So, if we’re all got our dicks up for hanging on to laws that caught Timothy McVeigh, let’s go ahead and add gun control to that pile, shall we?
The truth is, research has consistently shown that pretextual stops do very little to make us safer. A Philadelphia study found that out of 300,000 stops, only 0.67% recovered any sort of contraband—which could include weed—and just 0.17% recovered any weapon. When you measure the success rate of pretextual stops by any metric other than “percentage of Timothy McVeighs caught,” they’re a tremendous waste of time.
Also for what it’s worth, in some smaller municipalities, police aren’t just looking for crimes, they’re looking for money. There are towns around the country that have resorted to ramping up ticketing while enduring budgetary shortfalls. Basically, as soon as their balance sheet gets worse, magically it seems, so do the driving skills of the people in their community.
We’ve talked before about the practice of using ticketable violations to fund local governments in places like Ferguson, Missouri, and Brookside, Alabama. People can still wind up being stopped, ticketed, and even imprisoned for their inability to pay because in 17 states, minor traffic violations are arrestable offenses that come with a criminal record. And even in states where that isn’t the case, people can still end up in jail because many places can lock you up for failure to pay fines.
Just listen to this woman from St. Louis explain how traffic fines can quickly spiral into a dire situation:
How many times have you been stopped?
I’m in St. Louis. I don’t keep count.
Five, ten—
Keep going. Ten was the minimum number of times I’ve been locked up, so take that and double it. I’ve been stopped no less than 20 times. If you don’t have the money to pay the fine, you go to court. When you go to court, they’ll tell you, ‘Court cost, ticket, plus fees. You now owe $300.’ Do you have $300 to pay today? No? All right, they put you on a payment plan. So every month, you have to come see us and pay this by the 21st. If not, they issue you a warrant on the 22nd. Make you payments on time. So, let’s say you don’t make that payment. You get a warrant. What do you do? If you have the resources, you can pay, but most people don’t have the resources. So, you just run. Catch me if you can.
How many warrants did you rack up?
At one point, I was wanted in 11 different municipalities.
Eleven different municipalities. How did you live with that?
Carefully.
JOHN: Yeah, that seems about right. Asking “How do you live with 11 warrants?” is a bit like asking, “How do you hold a newborn baby?” or “How do you give a porcupine a hand job?” The answer is: f*cking carefully.
And the cost of these stops is borne overwhelmingly by communities of color, particularly Black drivers. One analysis from Massachusetts County found that police pull over Black drivers at more than twice the rate of white drivers for non-traffic safety violations, like a broken taillight. Many police departments—even large ones—obscure this by simply refusing to track the racial makeup of who they stop and search. While others gather the data but fail to connect the dots as to what it means.
Just watch this police official in New Jersey cite data of his own before having his case destroyed with a pretty simple statistic:
I pulled our motor vehicle stop data by race this morning before we did the interview to get it in real time, and we’re at 1,814 motor vehicle stops for the year so far. 576 are Hispanic, 573 are white, and 574 are African-American. So, it’s pretty even across the board, and if it ever spikes, we’ll investigate why.
Yeah, but what you just told me is really stark because 60% of the population of Bloomfield is white, and only about 20% of the population is Black. So how do you account for that?
Um, like I said before, it’s basically where our police officers are deployed.
JOHN: Right, it’s about where your officers are deployed. You are so close to figuring it out—you just need to see the obvious conclusion. It’s like watching a fourth grader do a multiplication problem on the black board, get all the way to the end, and then write the answer as, “Woody Allen is innocent.” No! What? How did you get to that? The answer is staring you right in the face, you idiot!
Look, racial profiling during traffic stops is nothing new. It stretches from the Jim Crow-era South all the way through the 1980s, when cops were trained using a “drug courier profile,” which had them looking for supposedly telltale traits like dreadlocks or wearing lots of gold jewelry—profiling both Black people and, I guess, very occasionally, white girls named Branch who make their own tampons. (But she’s going to be fine; her dad is a senator.)
That was even before the Supreme Court case I mentioned earlier (Whren v. United States), which raised the bar to prove cases of racial bias. Because now, to prove racial profiling, you need to establish intent—which is obviously hard, because no cop is going to explicitly admit they pulled you over because of your race. That’s led courts to allow some pretty explicit profiling.
One federal judge even rejected claims of racial intent after an officer justified pulling over a Black driver by saying, “One can never tell with you people.” If that doesn’t prove racial intent, I’m not sure what does.
Even more recently, just listen to the officer who pulled over Philando Castile for a broken taillight, explaining on the radio beforehand why he was about to do that:
I’m going to stop a car. I have reason to pull it over. The driver looks more like one of our suspects just because of the wide set nose.
Holy sh*t. It is hard to argue you’re not profiling someone when you’re pulling them over because of their literal profile.
Castile was apparently pulled over in and around St. Paul, Minnesota, 46 times—amassing more than $5,000 in fines. His mother is pretty clear about what was happening to him:
Why do you think your son was stopped so many times?
Because he was Black. Because he was Black. Nobody can be that unlucky, and nobody is that horrible of a driver. It wasn’t like he ran a stop sign, or he was in a car accident. It’s none of that. It’s what they call now pretext stops.
JOHN: Yeah, she’s just stating the obvious there. There is no other interpretation. It’s not some big, unsolvable mystery, like what happened to Amelia Earhart, or where do all your socks go when you wash them, or what the f*ck these two talk about? Questions no one has an answer to.
I’m not saying I’m not happy for them. I’m happy for them. I’m just saying I don’t know what their dinner table conversation is like, and I don’t think you do either. But we’re happy for them. I’m happy for them.
The point is, the stakes here are incredibly high. And, infuriatingly, cops sometimes glibly remind drivers of that. Just watch this interaction between a Florida officer and a driver he saw as uncooperative:
Twenty-nine-year-old Jerod S. Nicholas was on his way to work when he was pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt. Let’s show you how it all went down.
Officer: “Go to jail today.”
Nicholas: “I’m going to work, man.”
Officer: “No, you’re not going to work.”
Nicholas: “I’m going to work.”
Officer: “You’re going to give me your driver’s license, registration, and insurance. If not, you will not be going to work today. Simple thing, man. This is how you guys get killed out here, man. Registration and insurance.”
Nicholas: “What? Say that again?”
JOHN: Yeah, say that again. There’s a lot to object to in that exchange, but let’s zero in on the passivity of the words “get killed”—as if a shooting is something that just happens, as opposed to an action that the officer would be choosing to take.
One major reason why cops may be especially jumpy during stops is that they’re actively taught to fear them. Trainers and tactical guides often claim that vehicle stops account for more killings of officers than almost any other type of interaction. Police training can reinforce all of this.
Just last year, some footage came to light from a six-day training conference for cops held in New Jersey. A significant portion of which focused on traffic investigations and also featured this bold motivational speech:
I love what the f*ck I do for a living. There’s nothing else I’m good at. I love violence, I love fighting, I love shooting, and I f*cking love freedom. It wasn’t that long ago that we were drinking out of the skulls of our enemies. Like, you know, like, ‘I’m going to f*cking murder this guy, then I’m going to take his head, then I’m going to cut his head in half, and then I’m going to boil his skull, and then I’m going to drink out of that skull.’
Rad, right?
JOHN: Okay, a few things. First, no, not f*cking rad. Second, I do believe you when you say there is nothing else you’re good at. And least importantly—why are you wearing a shirt covered in elegant birds? You’re talking like a deranged serial killer, but you’re dressed like you’re at brunch in West Palm Beach. That shirt doesn’t remotely match your persona, which from what I can tell is, “What if someone fed Milo Ventimiglia nothing but raw meat and trauma?”
That conference was run by a company called Street Cop Training, whose logo apparently features an eagle dry-humping a police badge. The company estimates it trains between 25,000 and 30,000 officers nationwide every year. In fact, between 2020 and 2023, public agencies in at least 46 states provided direct payment to Street Cop Training. That conference you just saw was attended by nearly a thousand officers from around the country who, in addition to hearing speeches, were also given a “Reasonable Suspicion Factors Checklist”—a list of behaviors supposedly indicating when a driver is trying to cover up a more serious crime.
The checklist advises looking out for things like passengers on their cell phones (usually texting during a stop), yawning (not always, but often). The checklist also says it’s suspicious if a driver looks away from a police car while passing it, but also if they look at it—leaving the option of closing your eyes while driving past a police car, which feels bad. You know who would agree with that? Those road safety freaks from Cats, like Rumple Weasel, Crunkle Butt, Jumble Scat, Licky Flop, Jazzle Banger, Jingle Sprinter, and of course old Tinkle Sh*t. And again, I don’t remember their names, and I’m not willing to learn.
All in all, what was taught at that conference was so egregious that New Jersey’s Office of the State Controller found many of the tactics were both unjustifiably harassing and unconstitutional.
For all the fear pumped into cops, I should note that while it can of course be a dangerous job, studies have shown that the dangers of traffic stops have been vastly inflated. An officer’s chance of being killed during a stop is estimated somewhere between 1 in 3.6 million and 1 in 6.5 million. As one DA who was called for police reformers said, “The risk is statistically negligible but existentially amplified.”
It’s notable that during certain encounters, cops do seem able to have less of a hair-trigger response. While that man in Florida got lectured for simply talking back, just watch how this cop deals with a driver immediately doing a lot more than that:
Officer: “Go back into your car. I’ll be with you in a second.”
Driver: “You better check the registration on this plate soon, mister!”
JOHN: Wow. That guy exited the car with the full righteous bitch energy. He delivered that line with a conviction of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman—”Big mistake. Big. Huge.”
That guy, by the way, was a county judge. And when the cop found that out after checking his registration, this is how their interaction ended:
Officer: “Have a good day, judge.”
Judge: “You bet.”
JOHN: Responding to “Have a good day” with “You bet” instead of “You too” is a level of petty self-assuredness I will never attain. When that man orders at a restaurant and the waiter says, “Good choice,” he responds with, “I know.”
Incidentally, you might assume the back of his car is blacked out to hide his license plate, but I’m going to choose to believe it’s because he was proudly displaying one of those “I Eat A**” stickers. Prove me wrong, judge. Prove me wrong.
For Black drivers, even when traffic stops don’t result in a shooting, an arrest, or even a fine, there can still be real harm from the steady wear and tear that comes from dehumanizing interactions. Take what happened to Tayon Lee, a teenager who, in 2018, was driving home after grabbing a slushy and chips at a gas station. He was pulled over for supposedly making too wide of a turn. The police subjected him to questioning about whether he had drugs in the car (which he didn’t) and ordered him to step outside, where he was handcuffed and frisked while they searched his vehicle.
Just watch how, when one of the cops tries to blame him for the stop, Lee calls him out on his bullsh*t:
Officer: If you don’t mind me asking, why do you have like this negative view towards the police? What’s the deal? What’s ever happened in your life personally where you’re like—you can give me a good explanation ?
Lee: Absolutly nothing.
Officer: Really?
Lee: F*cking, I graduated. I got a good ass job. I graduated with three full-ride (inaudible) scholarship. I never did sh*t in my life. I’ve been in the house all day.
Officer: So, what’s the problem? Why are we in this situation?
Lee: You. F*cking you put me in this situation.
Officer: We didn’t do anything to you.
Lee: You pulled me over.
JOHN: Yeah, of course, it’s that cop’s fault. He’s playing dumb while creating the problem.
It’s like me asking you, “Why are you so bummed out right now?” as if I haven’t been professionally bumming you out for the past 25 minutes. The cop who pulled Lee over later testified that he believed Lee was armed because of his “nervousness,” which is clearly ridiculous. Thankfully, a judge later sided with Lee, ruling that nervousness alone is not a sufficient basis to articulate reasonable suspicion—a legal rationale experts refer to as a f*cking “duh.”
That cop also tried to justify his actions by mentioning the presence of a small souvenir Louisville Slugger bat in the car, which he claimed could have been used as a weapon. But you should know the bat in question was one of these (a small novelty bat weighing only six ounces).
I’m sorry, but that is not long enough to be a weapon—it’s barely long enough to be one of Pinocchio’s nose boners. As the stop continued, another cop arrived, and so did Lee’s mother, who asked him why her son was being treated this way. The cop explained that they were actually part of a serious crime unit and essentially admitted that doing bullsh*t traffic stops were a key part of their job:
Officer: “One of the aspects of what we do is we focus on traffic stops. Okay? Right now—Are you listeing to me?”
Lee’s Mother: “Yeah, I’m listening.”
Officer: “OK. Right now, the city has been plagued by guns—”
Lee’s Mother: “I don’t want the history, I just want to know why my son—”
Officer: “When I say right now—it’s not history, I’m telling you what we’re doing right now, okay? And I’m trying to let you understand but it’s like you don’t want to hear it.”
Lee’s Mother: “I know all of that, I just want to know about my son.”
Officer: “I’m getting to that.”
Lee’s Mother: “I don’t need the context. I know my son didn’t do anything.”
Officer: “It’s a traffic infraction that he was stopped for, okay?”
Lee’s Mother: “I believe that.”
Officer: “You don’t believe it. You weren’t here. You didn’t see it.”
Lee’s Mother: “You believe your guy, and I believe my son.”
Officer: “Has your son ever made a traffic infraction, do you think?”
Lee’s Mother: “No, he has not.”
Officer: “He’s never made a traffic infraction?”
Lee’s Mother: “No, he has not.”
Officer: “I bet we can watch him drive for five minutes and pick out a traffic infraction.”
Lee’s Mother: “I bet you could. Yeah, I bet you could.”
JOHN: Yeah, she’s right. She’s also showing superhuman restraint there in the face of something utterly enraging. Because “I bet we could find a bullsh*t reason to pull your son over” isn’t the flex that cop seems to think it is. It’s actually kind of the whole problem here.
In fact, the cop who originally detained Lee told him at one point, “We’re going to stop 30 more people after you,” showing that that stop wasn’t about one bad interaction—it was a bad system working exactly as designed.
So, what do we do? Well, the first thing we should do is incredibly simple: stop doing pretextual stops.
One big step toward that would be eliminating non-safety-related traffic stops. And I’m not the only one saying this. In cities around the country, activists have pushed for this change. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, City Councilwoman Elizabeth Nelson pushed to reduce the use of pretextual stops in part out of fear for her own sons. Last year, that law actually passed:
We are trying to set an example of what policing could look like.
A cracked windshield, tinted windows, loud exhaust, broken taillights, or expired registration or plates—these and other non-safety-related issues would no longer be grounds for a stop. Stops involving speeding, reckless driving, and other serious violations would remain a priority.
This frees up the police to be working on those types of primary offenses.
JOHN: Exactly. The law gives police more time to investigate actual dangerous driving, as well as other Michigan-related crimes—like, I assume, fish theft or maybe secretly sh*tting in a lake… I’m not sure what criminals do in Michigan, but cops could have more time to stop whatever it is that’s happening there.
Promising changes have been implemented elsewhere, too. A few years ago, Philadelphia became the first major city to ban police from stopping drivers for certain low-level traffic violations. After just eight months with the law in place, stops associated with those violations dropped by more than half, meaning nearly 12,000 fewer Black drivers were stopped.
And while that is great, it should obviously only be the beginning. We should also decriminalize minor traffic offenses and stop locking people up to enforce fines and fees. Experts also told us that one major step would be for states to require police to both keep and make public data on all their traffic stops—including the race of who they are stopping and what actions they are taking. That would make it easier to see and address patterns that might emerge. We should do that because, frankly, it’s f*cking incredible that it’s not already happening.
Again, I’m not saying we don’t stop people who are clearly driving dangerously. You can and absolutely should do that. But that’s clearly not the only way traffic stops are being used right now. Doing fewer of them for bullsh*t reasons should be a pretty easy sell. If they pose a safety concern for police officers, let’s reduce the number they have to do. And you know what? If that just so happens to reduce the number of cops that we need, what a happy accident that would be.
An accident. An accident. An accident.
JOHN: Yes, there are so many of you. The point is, we have to stop the abusive practices associated with traffic stops. It’s so obvious, even a child can see it.
A child. A child. A child.
JOHN: Yes. Well said. And if we could do this, then hopefully, someday in the near future, fear of traffic stops will be nothing but a distant, haunting…
Memory!
JOHN: Exactly. That is our show. Thank you so much for watching. We’ll see you next week. Good night!
Get down! Get down! Get down! You’re not allowed up here! Get down! Get off my desk! Get down! Bad cats! Bad cats! Here, look, have a toy. See? You like that? You like it when it goes over there? You like it when it goes over here? Get it! See? Get it!
